The article revises the issue of studying foreign experience in improving the professional development of teaching staff. Remarks are made on the need to modernise the system of advanced training of pedagogical and research-pedagogical staff. Updating the system of advanced training, the creation of new structures is one of the priority directions of state policy in any country; it is aimed at ensuring the professional growth of a specialist. The achievement of a new quality of education is associated with the reorientation of education for preparing people for life, for solving the issues related to guaranteed employment, for the requirements of a fleeting society and technological changes. Education is viewed as a lifelong process that needs not only to be corrected, but also changed and transformed. The main features of advanced training have been analysed; the peculiarities of advanced training intended for research-pedagogical staff in such foreign countries as the USA, Great Britain and Germany have been investigated. The author emphasises that postgraduate pedagogical education in these countries is distinguished by a structural diversity, a variety of content, forms and methods of education, which is grounded by the specific features of the countries’ historical development, national traditions and priorities of educational needs of research-pedagogical staff (RPS). At the same time, external factors significantly influence the systems that have formed in modern Ukraine: the processes of globalisation of society, the internationalisation of education, the activities of international organisations that accumulate progressive pedagogical ideas and put forward urgent requirements for its improvement. As the author notes, in Ukraine, the work to improve the system of advanced training of domestic RPS, as well as in other countries, is carried out in all directions, using modern forms and methods. However, the author singles out two problems: 1) unsatisfactory technical support; 2) some resistance to innovation due to the human factor. The author sees the further development of the subject in expanding the range of studied countries, studying the content of advanced training courses and in analysing advanced training programs intended for research-pedagogical staff.